DKos-How Bankruptcy Saved My Life

How Bankruptcy Saved My Life
by LeftofArizona
Thu Mar 3rd, 2005

...By now you've surely heard that half of all bankruptcies are brought on by crushing medical bills. More startling is the fact that 75% of people who file for bankruptcy due to medical debt had health insurance. The diary below is the story of one such person.

Two years ago this month, everything changed. For me, that is. I had a great job, paid my bills, had enough left over for entertainment and a nice dinner out every so often. Things were seemingly fine in my land.

Within a few days, however, I was slowly falling apart due to a horrible onset of severe depression. My world was falling apart and I was falling into the hole of mental illness that seemed to do nothing but continue on and on and on. I wanted the falling to stop, and I was determined to make it stop.

So one a chilly Sunday morning in March of 2003, I opened up a package of razor blades and planned on introducing them to my wrists.

If it hadn't been for a dear friend who had been watching over me, I would have ended the falling with the ultimate finale. However, I was taken to a psychiatric hospital where I remained for a week, eating my meals with flimsy plastic spoons and taking medication to keep me alive.

For a week, I pondered everything that was happening. Although I was in a safe place, I still knew that once I walked through the doors of the hospital into the unsafe world, I had a host of problems to tackle.

While I was on the road to recovery and making sure that I had my needs tended to, I had to file my FMLA papers and wait for the nervous tics and lack of sleep to pass so I could return to my job. After 12 weeks, I still wasn't ready and took a very kind and geneerous severence package from my work.

I had believed that I would have some financial relief from my insurance so that I wouldn't have to stiff my doctors and the hospital while I was away from work and surviving off my accumulated time off and sick time. What was shocking was to discover that the provisions in my insurance were less generous for mental health issues than for physical ailments.

How ironic that if I had slashed my wrists, my insurance would have covered the cost of putting my body back togther, but it would not help in making sure I didn't cut myself to begin with. In the end, my insurance covered not a single penny of my hospital stay. It paid my psychiatrist a laughable $35 for each visit I made to his office on a twice-weekly basis for 12 weeks.

With no job, insurance that had little coverage for mental health issues, and still shaking like a leaf, I had no choice but to file for bankruptcy. I hated not being able to pay the doctor and the hospital that kept me alive, but I had no choice. Where was I going to come up with $20,000 while I could barely afford to pay my rent?

So, I contacted an attorney, explained what had happened and got my automatic stay by filing for Chapter 7 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. Several months later, I met with the Trustee, answered his questions and received my discharge papers shortly thereafter.

Now, two years later, I am back on track with another good job and paying my bills, but still living out of a medication bottle. I don't mind the latter as it is necessary, but I still, to this day, wonder what would have happened if I had not been able to file bankruptcy. The stress alone from bill collectors, collection notices and threats of lawsuits could easily have been something that would have pushed me back into the desire to commit suicide.

However, the Republicans don't care what happened to me. They don't care what happens to me. They have stalled on the Mental Health Parity bill. Now, they are going to block attempts for people with severe financial troubles from finding relief. I wonder how many people in a situation similar to mine will emerge in the future but will not have the life preserver called "bankruptcy protection."

Eventually, there will be someone who, from the pressures of creditors, won't be able to put up a defense against the stress and will bring the curtain down on their lives. The blood will be on the hands of those Republicans championing the changes to the bankruptcy code.

I would have hoped that they would have cared, but I am not surprised they don't.

They never did.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/3/3/215026/3462

my daughter messed up as a teenager, medical said it was a mental problem, it took me three years to pay to the damn bill.
I went without food except for the likes of peanut butter and never buying new clothes.

March 2003, just happens to be when the fascist war-mongering, Halliburton-ridden illegitimate Administration decided to up and invade a sovereign nation over a lie. Coincidence? I think not.

Didn't you know that? All they care about is helping the bankers and Corporate America into sucking every last useful thing you have in you out...and then leaving you to just curl up and die, like the no longer useful husk of a dead, sucked dry insect trapped in an abandoned spiderweb?

Ain't you figured that one out yet?

That is WHY I don't have all the luxuries and shit that others have...I cannot afford them, and I refuse to get myself into debt up to my eyeballs to have them...like everyone else who has them does.

I refuse to be an indentured servant to Citibank for the rest of my life.

I have one credit card, and one only. It is used only for emergencies and traveling. I have my internet service and my veterinary insurance direct-billed to the card every month to keep the card active, and pay off that amount every month.

Damned if the vultures are gonna suck ME dry!! I made that mistake once. I never filed banruptcy, either. I managed to work my own way out. And vowed never to fall into the trap again.

and the Muslims are dangerous because they are trying to put their money in sharia banks that do NOT charge interest.
Without interest,
buying a home is as strenuous as buying a very nice (but reasonable) car.

If an Islamic bank opens up in the neighborhood, it will close all the other banks in a matter of weeks.
The rich will no longer be able to live off the principal but the regular folks will be able to get ahead much more easily once they don't have to support all those elite country-clubbers.

That is what these wars are all about.
Survival of the parasites.